ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

The quote unquote crack baby study provides a lot of perspective on the issue. The factors that really do a number on babies and children aren't so much what their mothers ingest, but all of the social and environmental factors that come with living in poverty. If it makes someone feel better to manage their diet very carefully while pregnant or breastfeeding, that is awesome and they should do what makes them happy. But I wouldn't stress out about having days where you eat a lot of chocolate and toast.

Obv that's only one lesson to take from that study. The biggest one should be that we need to fix our fucked up country.

Don't know about other people who breastfeed, but I'm getting all the extra calories I need from Haribo right now. Might cut back if F begins to take on the appearance of a gummi bear.

I had the most insane intense unstoppable sugar cravings in my life for the first couple months of breastfeeding, especially any kind of sugar coated gummy candy like those "fruit slices" and also some Trader Joe's fruit gummy square things. It was kind of scary! The internet told me it's pretty common, though, so I just went with it. It's better now than it was but I still consider ice cream and chocolate to be staple foods.

Not gummy candy. Jelly candy. I felt it was very important to clarify.

The factors that really do a number on babies and children aren't so much what their mothers ingest, but all of the social and environmental factors that come with living in poverty.

I JUST opened this thread for the first time. My wife and I, after a miscarriage in 2005 and almost a decade of infertility stuff after that, attended the two-day seminar at the open adoption agency we're working with this past weekend. We met with birth moms one day and adoptive parents the next, telling us about their experiences.

This sort of thing was a running theme, as a huge percentage of their moms are homeless, use various drugs to varying degrees, smoke, don't eat well, and so on. The agency basically tries their best to keep them housed, fed, clothed, gives them phones to stay in touch and bus passes to make it to the doctor. The adopted kids all seem to turn out just fine, though the people at the agency were quick to point out that alcohol abuse is by far the worst (though surprisingly least common) thing that they see in terms of child development.

The part that sort of summed this up to me was the rather tightly wound, very focused and disciplined organic-everything stereotypical upper middle yuppie adoptive mom talking about meeting her birth mom for lunch the first time, who had requested massive amounts of sushi and a pack of smokes after lunch as well. Later as they were getting to the hospital she asked for grape swishers and a can of chew.

I'm just amazed that someone pregnant could even think about grape flavored cigars without barfing everywhere. Bless.

That's very exciting about the adoption agency!

Really anybody pregnant or not...

Grape flavored gum makes me want to hurl, and I'm not a fan of cigars and I need to stop thinking about this now.

Thanks. This whole thing has been super intense - we had to submit full financial information about every single dollar we have or owe to anyone and the past couple years tax returns, get fingerprinted for a full FBI background check, fill out a massive questionaire / autobiography about ourselves, our relationship, our families, and our strengths and weaknesses, get physicals and doctor approval, and have questionnaires vouching for us by four couples with kids that we've known for at least five years. Not to mention the home study and the brochure we have to put together for the birth moms to browse through.

We're now in the waiting pool and could be picked by a birth mom at any time with very little warning, hence me finally feeling ready to poke around in I Love People-Making.

My general feeling on all of these parenting movements/trends is that there are a lot of factors that go into shaping a little person, and you can't really ever pinpoint one as being make-or-break (beyond basic nutrition, sleep, love). Kids have thrived in both more and less "attachment oriented" families, in more and less disciplinarian families, etc. And they've been screwed up in all of the above as well. I think if you are focused on trying to be a good parent and do what you think is in your child's best interests, you probably will!

That whole process is bananas. Not that our path with IVF was easy, but the only gatekeeping was financial. We could be axe murdering scientologists for all the fertility clinic knew.

following a couple of people i know through the adoption process really opened my eyes and made me sort of politically evangelistic about it - the hurdles are ridiculous, and the fact that one of the "loopholes" that got closed in the tax code is the deduction for adoption costs is completely fucking maddening to me.

basically if you want a great "system is broken" talking point, economically discouraging people from adopting unwanted children in need is a pretty good flashing neon sign imo

We opted out of IVF mostly cause of the money, we weren't comfortable essentially gambling when we could go for a sure thing. Though honestly after years of random doctor visits I don't know if we could have subjected ourselves to the necessary routine for that to work even with unlimited funds.

We know a couple people who've used this agency, and the women who run it have been doing so for 30+ years and are pretty badass - they've seen some shit and have a really grounded take on the realities of what kind of women are in the position where they need to give up their child and really emphasize that to the adoptive parents.

It was actually really touching to hear a lot of the rather sheltered, upper-middle-class adoptive parents sharing their experiences and how it opened their eyes to and changed their opinions about this vast, invisible underclass that they never encountered in their daily lives and now are essentially part of their extended family. Bitching about how the nurses treated their dyed-haired / tattooed / dentally-challenged birth moms like garbage, having a new sympathy for street kids, understanding the need for a social safety net, that sort of thing.

Sorry to get all logorrhetic here but it's been a long-ass time since I've felt like I'd ever actually get to be a parent and now sometime in the next 12 months or it's probably going to happen and I'm pretty ecstatic about it.

omg I just got so excited for you I got butterflies.

being a parent is the best, even when it's horrible

haha so true

That is so awesome, Joygoat, very exciting!

I have always been interested in adoption but found, what I understood of the process, overwhelming. It is not easy. I spoke to two women who adopted in the early 70's and either they forgot a lot of what actually happened or it was just terrifically easy. I watched a Cary Grant film in my early 20's called Room for One More and it got me interested in fostering and adoption.

Carl, that article will stay with me a long time.

I spent the first year of breastfeeding being as healthy as possible, hard to do in food deserts and we were in a big one. After a year I focused more on trying to get August to more solids. Finally, she is finally there and eats what we eat. She still nurses at nap time and bedtime and all night long it seems, an hour or so upon waking.

This is maybe TMI or not very exciting but Ivy had a standard complement of preemie/NICU baby latch problems and I had some oversupply/forceful letdown/endless engorgement situations so we've been using nipple shields with great success. Some people are really anti-nipple shields, but I think they are great (beats the hell out of exclusive pumping for damn sure), although I often envied people who could just pop their baby on their boob without accoutrement and also have one less thing to wash. Plus it increases the difficulty of nursing outside of the home. Anywayyyyyyyy I've been gently trying to wean her off of them, mostly just offering the breast without them to see how that goes but not like insisting she nurse without them if she wasn't into it. I figured she'd probably grow out of them since her latch issues were more about learning eating competency (plus the relative size of her mouth and my nipples, and also not choking). We'd gotten to the point where I mostly just used them in the morning (because otherwise it is like drinking from a firehose, poor thing) and this morning she straight up refused to nurse with the shield*! I'm sure we'll backslide before we're done with them for good, but I'm pretty psyched that she's steering the ship towards shield-free nursing.

*Also sometimes I call her Vic Mackey because she's on the shield and mostly bald, and I don't really want to think about Michael Chiklis while breastfeeding, so that's another good thing about this development.

lol

whoo boy, K's sleep habits are OUT THE WINDOW. Some kind of 2-year-old regression/separation anxiety thing. We tried to referberize her a couple times but it's not working somehow, so we're doing the stay in the room until she falls asleep. But she has a cold and keeps waking up, and last night she finally just wound up in bed with us. I got kicked a lot.

Aww Carl, your post didn't get me all TMI, got me more thinking Go-Ivy, Go-Carl!!! WOOHOO Sweet!

Thanks! I'm definitely not used to talking about my boobs on the internet. Except in the bra thread.

Hurting-I keep hearing about this phase. August has never (EVER) slept for very long without me near her so...uh, wondering how this can get more complicated once she reaches that stage. Slipping out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night has to be quick or she'll wake up. As an infant, getting her from arms to mattress was a feat. Slipping away while she sleeps...ninja...sometimes I still leave my shirt behind with the hopes she'll keep smelling mommy and stay asleep.

Feel the whole world has seen mine or is well aware of them online.

:o

hahaha

Oh man Ivy is such a good sleeper. Bedtime at 8 and reliably sleeps through the night in her crib, slept through upstairs neighbors' party, sleeps through us doing normal stuff in the apartment... I feel like when she hits toddlerhood there's going to be hell to pay.

Fox is the opposite: he slept a grand total of 6.5 hours yesterday. Argh. How single parents do this is beyond me.

Hurting-I keep hearing about this phase. August has never (EVER) slept for very long without me near her so...uh, wondering how this can get more complicated once she reaches that stage. Slipping out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night has to be quick or she'll wake up. As an infant, getting her from arms to mattress was a feat. Slipping away while she sleeps...ninja...sometimes I still leave my shirt behind with the hopes she'll keep smelling mommy and stay asleep.

― *tera, Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I forget how old August is, and it's different to an extent for different children, but K's relatively good sleep phase probably lasted from like 9 months old to about two weeks ago. Last night I was on the floor next to her crib from 8:30-9pm, again from 9:30-10pm, then I just fell asleep on her floor from 11pm to about 1:30 am, at which point H realized where I was and came in and got me. She did sleep from then until about 8am, mercifully.

That is a long run, Hurting. August is 23 months old...in five days.

She might be more independent about getting herself back to sleep once she's in her own room?

Although that of course comes with its own issues.

She's been in her own room for over three months.

We did the ferber thing back when and it was tough but seemed to "work" I guess. Somehow right now I don't feel like it will though, she's kind of too smart to give up, but also not old enough that we can fully explain things to her.

Sorry - unclear - I was talking about August

Another great article on over-protective parenting. Any UK folks have anything like "The Land" near them? I'd love one of those places here, but I'm picturing a ridiculous waiver that I'd have to sign in order to let my kids play there...

Hurting, are you the parent who was trying to put K in her own room and shut the door and be super quiet to try to get her to sleep and it turned out what was bothering was your absence and it helped to have the door open and be able to hear you? That's always seemed like kind of a profound moment to me. Pre-verbal humans are a mystery.

I was kind of biased from the outset because it was written by Hannah Rosin, but I didn't think that article was so great. The Etan Patz thing is a total strawman -- there are lots of things short of ABDUCTION BY STRANGER that you might want to protect your child from in a large city.

Re that article: tl; sounds like growing up in the country.

schwantz, no (we used to have a 'dump' we played in, with a rusted old car), but google Playing Out to see something vaguely similar (you could start one yourself!). Admittedly nowhere near as cool as 'the land' sounds...

L, I think that was me. But it is the nature of human development that children continually confound you as they grow, such that every time you think you have "solved" them, something new arises. It's no longer acceptable for her to just hear us, we have to actually be there. In fact, even if I stay until she falls asleep and then leave, she gets EXTREMELY mad that I'm not there if she wakes up again.

I'm all for letting kids do all sorts of crazy shit by themselves, but I certainly do not trust drivers in this city not to hit them. I almost get hit on a daily basis, I wouldn't want to put a smaller, less aware human up against them.

Tracer...She seems independent enough in many ways but when it comes to sleeping and napping she becomes a baby-baby again and cries until nursing commences then drifts off. We have watched her wake up in the hopes that she will just put herself back to sleep. Instead she just becomes more and more awake if she doesn't see me then cries, nurses, back to sleep in seconds. I escape, it happens again and again until I just stay in bed. I have many projects I'd love to get too at night but I pretty much sleep when she does.

I'm remembering my childhood, where I just rode my bike all over town with my friends and no parental supervision, and wishing my kids could have some of that. I plan on letting them walk over to the park near my house by themselves pretty soon, I think.

Yeah I have projects I want to get to too. Like eating dinner. It's 9:20 and I'm still on the floor of k's room, haven't eaten yet.

Tera that sounds rough. At what age do you plan to stop feeding at night? August is waking up because he's used to waking up to feed, but he's also old enough that he can go the whole night without feeding. The problem is that you have to make the painful transition at some point.

sorry I feel like both those posts came off wrong, probably because I was hungry and lying on a floor in a dark room

(August is a she)

I just spent a stupid amount of time on a marketing survey, seduced by the promise of free diapers. Stupid free diaper promise.